Afghanistan - selling children - guess which ones?

https://spectator.com/article/why-does-the-bbc-think-afghan-men-are-selling-their-daughters/

' ‘Underage [marriages] have their problems’, the Beeb quotes one of the dads as saying. Call off the hunt for the grossest understatement of the year. It is the stuff of moral oblivion to refer to girls being sold for cash as a ‘problem’'

O'Neill suggests 'cultural relativism' and fear of criticising Afghanistan's culture of selling girls is the reason the BBC report was slanted as it was.

I thought the report's aim was more an attempt to criticise Trump for cutting aid, tbh. The casual misogyny just wasn't noticed. Not that this invisible prejudice is better.

The BBC post on X has now been community noted.

https://x.com/BBCWorld/status/2056483177653313557

'BBC frames Afghan fathers selling daughters as sympathetic. All profiled cases involve girls (e.g. 5-year-old). Selling daughters for marriage is a longstanding cultural practice in parts of Afghanistan. BBC focuses on fathers' distress over outcomes for the girls (rape).'

2022

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/8/14/ill-be-sacrificed-the-lost-and-sold-daughters-of-afghanistan

'Across Afghanistan, it is common for children – particularly girls – to be married. Families arrange marriages to pay back personal debts, settle disputes, improve relations with rival families, or simply because they hope marriage will offer them protection from the worst extremes of economic hardship, and social and political upheaval.'
...
'Sadiq Akif, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, was quoted earlier this year saying, “when a girl reaches puberty, she can be given to marriage”. Puberty in girls generally occurs between the ages of eight and 13.
While most countries consider 18 to be the age of maturity, many countries allow under-18s to marry in some or all circumstances.
Child marriage has always existed in Afghanistan. But, recent reports suggest an increase in child selling and marriages spurred by a deepening humanitarian crisis following the Taliban takeover. The country’s aid-dependent economy was already on edge when the Taliban seized power last August. Then the international community froze about $9bn in Afghan assets overseas and halted all funding, reluctant to work with the Taliban government. The consequences have been devastating for a country already battered by decades of war and poverty.'

Also 2021, from Unicef:

https://www.unicef.org/rosa/press-releases/girls-increasingly-risk-child-marriage-afghanistan

'“We have received credible reports of families offering daughters as young as 20 days old up for future marriage in return for a dowry.
“Even before the latest political instability, UNICEF’s partners registered 183 child marriages and 10 cases of selling of children over 2018 and 2019 in Herat and Baghdis provinces alone. The children were between 6 months and 17 years of age.
“UNICEF estimates that 28 per cent of Afghan women aged 15–49 years were married before the age of 18.'

A bit more explication from the 2021 NPR report:

'Arranging marriages for very young girls is a frequent practice throughout the region. The groom's family - often distant relatives - pays money to seal the deal, and the child usually stays with her own parents until she is at least around 15 or 16. Yet with many unable to afford even basic food, some say they'd allow prospective grooms to take very young girls or are even trying to sell their sons.
But Gul, unusually in this deeply patriarchal, male-dominated society, is resisting. Married off herself at 15, she says she would kill herself if her daughter, Qandi Gul, is forcibly taken away.
Gul remembers well the moment she found out her husband had sold Qandi. For around two months, the family had been able to eat. Eventually, she asked her husband where the money came from, and he told her.
"My heart stopped beating. I wished I could have died at that time, but maybe God didn't want me to die," Gul said. Qandi sat close to her mother, her hazel eyes peering shyly from beneath her sky-blue headscarf. "Each time I remember that night...I die and come back to life. It was so difficult."
She asked her husband why he did it.
"He said he wanted to sell one and save the others. 'You all would have died this way,' (he said.) I told him, 'Dying was much better than what you have done.'"
Gul rallied her community, telling her brother and village elders that her husband had sold her child behind her back. They supported her, and with their help she secured a "divorce" for her child, but only on condition she repays the 100,000 afghanis (about $1,000) that her husband received.'

A remarkably similar article from 2021:

https://www.npr.org/2021/12/31/1069428211/parents-selling-children-shows-desperation-in-afghanistan

'The aid-dependent country's economy was already teetering when the Taliban seized power in mid-August amid a chaotic withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops. The international community froze Afghanistan's assets abroad and halted all funding, unwilling to work with a Taliban government given its reputation for brutality during its previous rule 20 years ago.
The consequences have been devastating for a country battered by four decades of war, a punishing drought and the coronavirus pandemic. Legions of state employees, including doctors, haven't been paid in months. Malnutrition and poverty stalk the most vulnerable, and aid groups say more than half the population faces acute food shortages.'